I got the most recent National Geographic in the mail yesterday. The issue is devoted entirely to one subject, Africa, and, according to the AP, is notable for being the first one-topic issue in the magazine’s history and only the second (since they started using cover photographs) to not have a photo on the cover. National Geographic always provides broad, colorful stories, but never before have they delved so deeply on a single subject, and having read through this issue, I think they ought to do it more often. Some notable names make appearances in the Africa issue. Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse) pens the issue’s introduction with a discussion of why Africa has fallen behind the rest of the world but is not doomed to this fate in the future. Joel Achenbach, Washington Post reporter – and blogger – looks at some of the current shortcomings of paleoanthropology. And Alexandra Fuller (Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight) returns to Zambia, the country of her youth, in a piece that is more personal and less straightforward than a typical National Geographic article.
National Geographic’s Africa issue
Breaking the Mold: Can Jeff Bezos Save the Washington Post?
Whatever you may think of Jeff Bezos and other tech innovators who broke the pre-Internet business model, the fact is the old model is broken – and who better to fix it than the man who helped break it in the first place?
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Proving a Villain: The Search for Richard III
The modern world swooned last month when the bones found under a parking lot in Leicester, England were confirmed to be those of Richard III. Richard’s apologists hope that his newfound celebrity will encourage us all to submit our old Shakespearean prejudices to a round of honest fact-checking.
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The Camaraderie of the Underrated: JC Gabel Relaunches The Chicagoan
Chicago! We’ve got this great chef, and an amazing architect, and these cool music guys, and really good coffee!
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Copyrights Wake: SOPA, James Joyce, and the Future of Intellectual Property
SOPA would have expanded the arsenal of cease-and-desist tactics that the entertainment industry has been deploying ineffectively for the last 15 years, starting with the crackdowns on file-sharers. Copyright holders would have been able to create an embargo against websites allegedly violating their copyrights by compelling payment processors and ad networks to suspend their services, with very little recourse for contesting the accusation.
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Orhan Pamuk’s Unlikely New Role
Turkish media’s attempts to trivialize dissidents by focusing on their private lives has a touch of the News of the World scandal about it.
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Race and American Poetry: Dove v. Vendler
We can, should, and will continue to argue about artistic quality, but we should do so while remembering that poetry can only live in the minds of living readers, and that its value comes out of their encounters with individual poems, which are, thank god, incredibly various (both the poems and the encounters.)
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The Disappointment Author: Lethem v. Wood
The latest example of a writer stepping into the ring to defend his work against a rapacious critic: award-winning author Jonathan Lethem v. award-winning critic James Wood, literary heavyweight bout par excellence.
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Dispatch from Turkey: Plagiarism Charges Levied at Award-Winning Author
Elif Şafak, who writes in both Turkish and English, has enjoyed huge popular success globally for her novels. She was the winner of the Union of Turkish Writers prize for The Gaze, and she is a frequent presence on the Turkish best-seller list. She has appeared on NPR and written for the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. In May, Şafak shared a stage with Jonathan Franzen and Salman Rushdie as a PEN presenter. In short, she's a big deal (and in Turkey, a huge deal).
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